'Buckyball' Molecules Discovered in Another Galaxy

by SPACE.com Staff | October 27, 2010 03:42pm ET

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected huge quantities of buckyballs -- little spheres of carbon -- in outer space. The background of this artist's illustration is an infrared photo of the Small Magellanic Cloud, taken by Spitzer. The middle pullout shows a magnified view of an example of a planetary nebula, and the right pullout shows an even more magnified depiction of buckyballs, which consist of 60 linked carbon atoms.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Cage-like carbon
molecules called buckyballs have been found in another galaxy, showing that they're likely common in outer space and upping the
odds that buckyballs delivered to the early Earth key chemicals necessary
for life, scientists say.

Astronomers using
NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope found buckyballs 
little spheres in the shape of soccer balls made up of 60 linked
carbon atoms  throughout our Milky Way galaxy, in the space
between stars and around three dying stars. They also detected the
molecules around a fourth dying star in a nearby galaxy in staggering
quantities  equivalent in mass to about 15 Earth moons,
researchers said. [Illustration
of the cosmic buckyballs.]

"It turns out
that buckyballs are much more common and abundant in the universe
than initially thought," said astronomer Letizia Stanghellini of
the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. "This
has implications for the chemistry of life. It's possible that
buckyballs
from outer space provided seeds for life
on Earth."

Buckyballs
everywhere

Buckyballs, also
known as fullerenes, are named after their resemblance to the
architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, an example of which is
found at the entrance to the Epcot theme park in Orlando, Fla.

The miniature
spheres were first discovered in a lab on Earth 25 years ago, but it
wasn't until last July that Spitzer provided the first confirmed
proof of their existence in space. At that time, scientists weren't
sure if they had been lucky to find a rare supply, or if perhaps the
cosmic balls were all around.

In the new study,
researchers found the buckyballs around three dying sun-like stars,
called planetary
nebulas,
in our own Milky Way galaxy. These cloudy objects, made up of
material shed from the dying stars, are similar to the one where
Spitzer found the first evidence for their existence.

The new research
shows that all the planetary nebulas in which buckyballs have been
detected are rich in hydrogen. This goes against what researchers
thought for decades  they had assumed that, as is the case for
making buckyballs in the lab, hydrogen could not be present.

The hydrogen, they
once theorized, would contaminate the carbon, causing it to form
chains and other structures rather than the spheres, which have no
hydrogen in them at all.

"We now know
that fullerenes and hydrogen coexist in planetary nebulas, which is
really important for telling us how they form in space," said
Anibal Garcia-Hernandez of the Instituto de Astrofisica de
Canarias, lead author of the new study, which appears online Oct. 28
in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Garcia-Hernandez
and his colleagues also located buckyballs in a planetary nebula
within a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud.

And there were a
lot them: equivalent to 2 percent of Earth's mass, or 15 of our
moons.

Another research
team recently found that buckyballs are also in the space between
stars, but not too far away from young solar systems. The molecules
may have been formed in a planetary nebula, or perhaps between stars.

"It's
exciting to find buckyballs in between stars that are still forming
their solar systems, just a comet's throw away," said Kris
Sellgren of Ohio State University, lead author of the other study,
which was recently published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This
could be the link between fullerenes in space and fullerenes in
meteorites."

Delivering seeds
of life?

The implications of
the findings are far-reaching, researchers said. Scientists have
speculated in the past that buckyballs, which can act like cages for
other molecules and atoms, might have carried substances to Earth
that kick-started
life. Evidence for this theory comes
from the fact that buckyballs have been found in meteorites carrying
extraterrestrial gases.

"Buckyballs are sort of like
diamonds with holes in the middle," said Stanghellini. "They
are incredibly stable molecules that are hard to destroy, and they
could carry other interesting molecules inside them. We hope to learn
more about the important role they likely play in the death and birth
of stars and planets, and maybe even life itself."

The
little carbon balls are important in technology research, too. They
have potential applications in superconducting materials, optical
devices, medicines, water purification, armor and more.